


Waiting in Vain

by Meenjan



Category: Jack West Jr Series - Matthew Reilly, REILLY Matthew - Works
Genre: F/F, F/M, Iolanthe has a huge crush on Zoe, Mentions of Rape
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-30
Updated: 2016-05-30
Packaged: 2018-07-11 04:40:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,206
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7029001
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Meenjan/pseuds/Meenjan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The first symptom of love, you find out too late, is powerlessness.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Waiting in Vain

**Author's Note:**

> I fully blame reinadefuego for this monstrosity, which wouldn't leave me alone until I'd made a freshly minted AO3 and posted it without studying a word for my exams.

You walk in and she doesn’t catch your eye. It’s not _meant to be_ or _destiny_ or _fate_ or what have you.

You walk in the room and you own it. All of it, except her. You see her a little later, hovering protectively over the little girl, and when you look up, she rolls her eyes.

  _Well, if that’s how we’re going to do this._

 “And who might you be?”

“Zoe Kissane, Irish Commandoes. No royal blood, I fear.”

 “Zoe’s a princess too. Well, that’s her nickname,” the little girl pipes up, and you detect a hint of pride in those oddly captivating blue eyes.

 Irish, and _pink_ in her hair to boot. Your stomach does an odd flip, and you react without a second thought.

 “How positively – _quaint._ ”

You meant it as a cool, calculated barb, but when her eyes flash with anger, you have to suppress a gasp and the bottom of your stomach drops away.

 Before she can launch into a tirade, her valiant leader jumps in to defend her. You barely hear what he says (because those _eyes_ , God) but from Lily’s questions, it’s definitely a jab at your Saxonic origins.  _How unoriginal, Captain._ “The captain is certainly loyal to his team,” you acquiesce grudgingly, and why, oh why can’t you drag your eyes away from her? 

You force yourself to face the Captain, because you may have lost this battle but the war is yours to win, and little does he know.

 

Hours later, you don’t know why you amble towards the only lit room on the plane when everyone’s asleep, because there is no way she might be still awake, is there? You run by a couple of insults in your mind, just in case, which makes it harder to hide your disappointment when the Captain is alone in the room.

The next day, you give the orders that condemn her to death by drowning in an ancient cave. It’s the one order you’ll regret the minute you gave it, because what a colossal waste, but you steel yourself. You marvel at how close she came to having unprecedented power over you.

 

****

She has taken up permanent residence in your head.

You dream of lithe limbs entangled with yours, blonde hair under your fingers, freckled skin flushed pink, those blue eyes boring into your soul, and your name on her lips. The taste of her blood on your tongue, scrapes of your skin under her nails, morning light catching her hair in just the right way so it looks like spun threads of gold.

When you wake up, it’s that much harder to see her look at the Captain, little peeks whenever she can, with the fiery, defiant love that you’ve come to associate with her, burning in her gaze.

You see how he looks at her too, when he thinks no one notices (but you do, you always do). His gaze is more tempered, but when he looks at her the world knows he is closed to everyone else, everything else.

It’s enough to make anyone go crazy.

And no one can deny that they’re perfect for each other, two halves of a whole. That doesn’t make it any easier. 

You hope you’re not half as obvious when you steal glances at her that leave you disoriented for a few minutes.

 

****

You’ve always been excited by women as much as men. But a lifestyle of that kind does not bode well for a royal, especially in a world ready to crucify a person for it. So, for the family’s sake, your entanglements have always been wham-bam-thank you ma’ams, to use a crude expression. They’re a part of you no less, but a part that will have to be hidden from the family and the Commonwealth, so you never see a woman twice.

Never have you wanted to return to a woman before her. Strange, for a woman you’ve known for a few weeks at best, whose information was fed to you through a file stolen from the SFA. You’ve romanticised her in your mind (maybe it’s because she’s so firmly out of your reach).

You want to watch her wake up in the mornings with mussed hair and lopsided pyjamas that she nicked from you. To watch her drink tea and complain loudly about the how you’re a disgrace to British blood. To watch her light up around you like she does when the Captain walks into a room.

Her happiness and yours are mutually exclusive, and you long for the perfect world where she is yours and you don’t have to share.

 

****

When Cieran Kincaid brags about how he took advantage of the trust she’d reposed in him, you force yourself not to react, your face as smooth as slate.

In your mind, you’ve already decided on the assassin you’ll despatch to make sure that he meets the painful end he deserves. Gunshot to the gut? No, wait. Poison. The slow acting, painful kind with no antidote. And maybe a strangling for good measure.

You knew you had a dark side but just _how_ dark, you needed her to find out for yourself. 

****

When you stride into Jack’s cabin on that journey to the last Pillar, you want nothing but someone in your bed, dammit. You’ve been hankering after a woman who hasn’t looked at you twice and it’s supremely frustrating. 

It doesn’t surprise you in the least when he doesn’t turn up to your bed. If he had, he wouldn’t be worthy of his perfect Irish princess, and you would have definitely thought the lesser of him. Would you have told Zoe if he had, just to watch her world crash and burn? Maybe. You’re not half as moral as these fools who clutter their lives with unnecessary constructs of nobility. But still, it’s hard to imagine pain in those eyes.

 You just hope that nobility is, in fact, the reason for Jack’s abstinence. You hope he hasn’t cottoned on to the fact that he is a poor replacement for the woman whom you both desperately want.   

 

****

You know what is going to happen as soon as your cousin decides to trust Cieran Kincaid with killing Jack West Jr, especially after the idiot decided to run his mouth off about Zoe Kissane in front of the man who’d destroy the world for her.

The look in his eyes when he hears that Zoe was _raped_ by this man. You’ve never seen that kind of an expression in any man’s eyes before, and it chills you to the bone. He doesn’t speak a word, but you already know that your assassin plan is rendered redundant now.

 You let him win this one.

 

****

You rest assured in the fact that there are yet more apocalyptic events in the future, which will still bring her into your orbit. The one person with an unbreakable power over you, who can bring you to your knees with a single raised skeptical eyebrow.

You hold on to a tiny remnant of hope that has no business existing in a world where the hero gets the girl and not the anti-heroine.

Until your spies tell you that Zoe Kissane is now Zoe Kissane-West.

 

**Author's Note:**

> I used to post as Meen Jan on FF.net. Come say hi on tumblr, I'm gayformelindamay. Coincidentally, that's also my URL.


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